Monthly Archives: March 2014

It is the end of the month of March and with this an important gaming milestone, my third anniversary of joining Steam.

A few months ago I was planning to write this post on the birthday BUT because of a touch of dyslexia I confused the 13th for a 31st, which is why I am writing this post now.

Since my three years of downloading Valve’s Steam 200+ games collection and hundreds and hundreds of hours of gameplay on record. With the celebration I thought now would be a good time to spin the yarn and tell all of you how I started my adventures through Steam.

It all started with my first Pax East back in 2o11. At the time my gaming experience was limited to World of Warcraft and just that. It was also the only game I played for years and because of my barebones laptop that I could afford on my early college student’s budget.

But going into this expo for the first time with my mother and younger brother just completed their amazing story with Uber Entertainment and one of our family’s pet chickens. It is a really long and epic read that you can catch it all on my mother’s blog found HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

The TLDR version is: It started with my brother asking a game developer for a few gaming keys for some friends who had a series of unfortunate events and it ended with one of our chickens starring in a video game.

I would like to see anyone else try to top that story.

Well that series of events happened and while I was exploring alone on the expo floor I stumbled upon Uber Entertainment’s booth. dispite knowing nothing about the game Super Monday Night combat, beyond the fact of my brother’s excitement to be a part of it, and being a good older brother I bought a digital key for the game, and if memory served I bought the deluxe key with an exclusive Penny Arcade inspired Cardboard Tube Samurai skin for the assassin character in the game.

After the everything was done and I was back home I followed the instructions on the card and in order for me to redeem and play this game I needed to download and install the steam client. Granted I did not play much of it because my barebones laptop started to overheat the moment the game asked it to run the game in a frame rate above single digits.

From there it is just history, I want to take this time to say thank you to PAX East, Uber Entertainment, and my little brother for opening of the gateway to a brand new world of PC gaming full of free games, charity driven bundles, and some of the biggest discounts in major AAA game titles I have ever seen.

Blizzard had a busy week, with the launching of their first expansion for Diablo 3, Reaper of Souls. On top of their impressive launch party but Blizzard also announced that Tyrael will be one of the playable heroes in the their newest game Heroes of the Storm.

This is great news because not only are Blizzard taking a leaf out of Nintendo’s book, Building hype for Super Smash Brawl, by announcing segments of their new game in line with a major release of one of their other gaming titles. But it also means I was completely called it two weeks ago when I exposed Blizzard’s “No game is an Island” marketing plan (Be MOP #350)

I could go into more marketing material but today, this Friday, I want to create a list for some of the Heroes I want to see in the game. Because the best thing about this game than say any of it’s other competition in the A.R.T.S/Moba genre is that Blizzard already has three expansive universe that they could continuously harvest from for years to come.

One (or all of the) Dragon Aspects from World of Warcraft.

These were my favorite characters from the Warcraft universe, they were there from the beginning with the creation of the Well of Eternity and they fought besides the players against Deathwing at the end of Cataclysm.

Plus how cool it would be incorporating powers like time manipulation into the game.

Deckard Cain from Diablo

This character has been an established character since the original Diablo and while playing through Diablo 3 for the first time I felt a bit anticlimactic killing him off in the first Act, it would be cool seeing an old fragile man going 1v1 against Diablo himself on the battlefield.

I could totally see him play as a support/specialist

A heroes from Blizzard’s still super secret T.I.T.A.N MMO

We know this project is eventually coming and even someone with no background in marketing can tell you that the moment project T.I.T.A.N is announced or hits the beta that Blizzard will be releasing a special HotS hero from that series. We now the game is in the works, it is better just to get it out of the way now.

An Innkeeper from World of Warcraft

I want something like an Inn Keeper in Heroes of the Storm, because it would be hilarious to see a game full of powerful heroes and villains to see one normal NPC in the heroes roster and fighting besides aliens, demons and important world leaders.

If they really wanted to connect it to a franchise they could have it be a new Hearthstone character.

Those are just my pick for additional heroes to add to the game, but I want to know what you think, What characters from Blizzards games do you want to see in Heroes of the Storm? Leave a comment down below I would love to hear want other people want from this game.

And Blizzard, if you are reading this, I can not wait to see you at this year’s PAX East.

This weekend I found some time t0 sit down with popcorn and soda to watch Valve’s recent documentary of the competitive side of Dota 2, Free to Play.

The few bit I will say about the documentary, coming from someone who is not a film buff at all, is that it was a good film. As someone who had no experience with following the professional circuit of Dota 2 the filmmakers did it’s job of drawing me into the story, keeping up suspense on what will happen next in the tournament, and getting me emotionally invested in the people towards the end.

I do not know what makes a good documentary, but I can recognize a good film when I see one.

While watching it many thoughts several important things stood out at me while watching the film. First I liked the clever use of the document’s title and how Valve implemented the various DLC packs that features the various professional players the documentary focused on throughout the story.

It was also comforting that see the early history esports, how popular the idea of a professional gamer is in the rest of the world, although I understand that the depiction of how beloved esports are in Asia might a bit bias for the sake of the film.

More importantly it looks like this is another step towards validating the idea of professional videogame players to be considered athletes.

I mentioned before that Riot Games has been doing this with their TV segments by inviting those gamer to the commentary decks to deconstruct the previous match fight by fight and showing the behind the scenes segments of everyone’s favorite teams very similar to what Football and Basketball shows are doing. (Be MOP #276)

Just recently League teams and Tournament Coordinators putting money in their own PR YouTube videos but I wonder if this will become a norm to have these are done just to prove that these tournaments are legitimate sport to the rest of the world.

Either way I am glad that products like these videos had enough support to warrant the cost of production and editing for full length features and promotional shorts and I would not be surprised to see these video aired on proper T.V stations, or possibly seeing the birth of a TV channel all about e-sports.

Watch_Dogs, in preparation for launch, released a video of the exclusive content PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 players will receive with their cop of the game. The video in question can be found HERE and it advertises 60 minutes of non-cosmetic content and gameplay. This is one of greatest sins on the console side of the videogame industry. We are out of the mid to late 90’s console war, there is no need to make content exclusive to one console or another.

After reading by last post about Watch_Dogs (Be MOP #348) one could claim that I am bias about this game. But I swear I don’t have a personal vendetta against this game, it is just brings up a lot of problems I have with the videogame world.

I discovered this problem with Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum PS3 only Joker DLC, it was continued with the launch of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV and peaked with Watch_Dogs. All of these games have content exclusive DLC only for the PlayStation version of those multiplatform games. I was going to write a top ten blog post about the worst videogame sins and this one was going to take the cake and rightly so because it is holding content back for the highest bidder.

Because I bought this on Steam I will never be able to play as the Joker.

I know that back in the day (read as Generation 5 and 6) the specs on the different types of consoles were so different and varied that it made sense to have the few multiplatform games was going be different and varied but when the hardware between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 is so similar that there is no reason to hold back content for one console or another.

I am not delusional, I know the importance exclusive gaming franchise like Mario, God of War, and Halo are to a console allure but holding back content on a game that comes out for all systems, from WiiU to the PC, is unacceptable.

Another great example of this is the recent Metal Gear V game and how the game advertised an exclusive Raiden and Deja Vu campaign of for both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 respectively.

I could see what they were going with paying homage to the classic PlayStation game but it still doesn’t excuse it from happening

These tactics are done for the sake of marketing, it is holding segments of videogame content hostage from the paying consumer. As a big Batman fan, if I wanted the full Batman Arkham Asylum gaming experience I would be forced to buy a PlayStation 3, neglecting my frankly better PC gaming laptop, to play as the clown prince of crime himself. I feel bad for the hardcore Metal Gear fans because if they wanted the entire MGSV experience I would have to buy two current generation consoles and two separate versions of the same game.

Again, what kills me is that this is all and only done for the sake of marketing and favoritism. After spending a weekend I could think of no good reason to continue this practice, it is done for the sake of greed and greed alone without a second thought for the consumers who did not luck out on getting the one gaming system with all the exclusive DLC. That is why it is one of my most hated sin in the videogame industry.

In a parade of comedy of errors I do not have a proper blog post for you guys today.

I was going to have today dedicated to my opinions and thoughts on Valve’s recently released documentary about Dota 2, Free to Play. But it was only after I arrived home from my job when I realized that I forgot to download, or as Steam suggested, pre-download the movie. Once the movie was downloaded it was far too late in the night to start watching it. Which was only then when I realized that it could be easily streamed.

Then I saw the news of Watch_Dog’s recent trailer showcasing the exclusive content in the PlayStation versions of their games and I was going to write a big long post about what I think but I need the weekend to prep the game in order to make sure exactly want to say in the way I want to say it.

So for Friday’s post I am just going to straight with you and announce my next series of filler posts. The first series was the ‘Screenshots of Pandaria‘, then the Star War themed ‘Writer’s Block‘ saga and now I am introducing the simply named Filler Post and I feel like I am going to get a lot of mileage out of it.

Blogosphere: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Be MOP. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

While this first post may seem a bit long to set up and boring at times with its establishing shots I can guarantee that the next installment, The Wrath of Khan Filler Post, will be critically acclaimed.

Alright everyone time to close out of your games, log off of steam, and unplug yourself from the virtual world. Where I am writing from Spring is finally starting to win against Winter on that terrible Battlefield called the month of March.

With such a great weather I think everyone collectively needs to go out outside, play, have a picnic, or at least very least read a book or two. Thank goodness for the people at the Humble Bundle are there to help us to unglue our eyes from our big expensive T.V screens and computer monitors and get us outside to read a some books on some slightly less expensive ebook or phone screens.

“You should go outside today,videogames will rot your brain” -Every mother out there

I don’t usually want judge a book by its cover but a title like ZvU should be sued of false advertising if it doesn’t deliver exactly what it says.

As the norm with these Humble Bundles you do get something more and if you pay above the average you get Mogworld, by Yahtzee Croshaw, Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies, and the promise of more books in the future. If you pay fifteen dollar or more you can download the Homeland Audio book, written by Cory Doctorow and read by Wil Wheaton.

Out of all the books I recommend you pay above the average to get the book Uglies. I bought the physical copy of the book years ago and it a future book that depicts a society where as a coming of age ritual, the people of city undergo surgery to make them the representation of physical perfection and the book explores the divide between the population who are too young to get the surgery and the people who have gone under the knife. With a the protagonist patently waiting to get the procedure while discovering the major secret of the city.

The Uglies is the start of a trilogy and if the other books are not included in Bundle at a later date I recommend you finish the series and picking up the epilogue/spin-off title, Extras, which takes place after the first three focuses on a society where social media and virtual popularity is the only way get achieve social status in the city.

I am sitting next to these book as I am currently writing this post. Also they say you can judge a person from their personal library, so judge (this on portion of my library) away.

But if you still want to enjoy life by finding an alternative to playing videogames but reading is not your fancy, first off shame on you and second you are just in luck because today Valve just released their Free to Play documentary about their Free to Play game, Dota 2, called Free to Play. So grab either a good cup of tea for the four, six or seven new books you just bought or cook up a bag of popcorn and sit back for a mid-week movie night.

Over the weekend I came down with a bit of a chest cold, it is nothing serious but it was bad enough to cancel any and all plans and justify locking myself in my room to play videogames all day.

On top of my regular list my regular games I decided to use this time to break out Serious Sam 3 BFE, one of the two games I dedicated to play for the month. As I mentioned at the beginning of the month this was my first First Person Shooter since Portal 2 and Quantum Conundrum (Be MOP #346).

I booted the game up and after the cut scene of the protagonist in his iconic white T-shirt looking over a city from a Helicopter with an open door I was all set for over the top shooter game with aliens, ridiculous guns, and time travel.

Just look at the protagonist, with a character like that I was on board for nothing a fun time of just shooting monsters, with no major political or subtle intellectual undertones

After the introductory cut scene and successfully slaying the first few introductory monsters was the point when I started to feel warm, dizzy, and overall worst than I ever felt at the lowest point with the chest cold. Then I remembered why I have not played a FPS since Portal 2 and Quantum Conundrum, it is because I am a part of a small group of people who get motion sickness from playing certain video games.

It is a shame that I get seasick when playing these games because it creates a barrier of entry for certain games that I can not get over, despite my desire to play these games

It’s like a twisted Twilight Zone episode, I truly want to play these games but I can’t, I just get into it without getting sick.

Back when I played through Portal 2 in college I had some amazing pressure point wristbands that magically -although temporally- cured my motion sickness, which was the major factor for me completing the game. Unfortunately the pressure point bands in question were lost in the various moves but while I am over turning over every rock to find those wonderful bands again it looks like I am stuck to playing fixed camera games.